Bronwyn Bruton

Elections scheduled for Wednesday in Zimbabwe are shaping up to be an absolute disaster. They were organized on short notice and without adequate budget, so promise to be plagued with irregularities. Some will be deliberate—the ruling party is expected to rig the vote and violently harass the political opposition—but enormous lines, unprinted ballots, and disorganized polling stations are likely to add to the problems. Given the likelihood of bloodshed—and the Atlantic community’s simmering hatred of President Robert Mugabe, who will be seeking a seventh term in office—Washington seems oddly disinvested in the outcome. Apart from one or two pro-forma calls for a “credible” poll, the administration has been quite silent, and so has the American press.
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The Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center hosted a not-for-attribution roundtable discussion with the Right Honourable Tendai Biti, MP, minister of finance of the Republic of Zimbabwe and secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
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In the latest in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton argues that while International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Uhuru Kenyatta has secured a presidential victory in the recent Kenyan elections, he is unlikely to be ostracized by the international community, which has little leverage and too much to lose if relations with Nairobi become strained.

In the latest in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton and Intern Sam Fishmanargue that the political climate is slowly changing in Eritrea.

As Kenyans go to the polls, observers are bracing for a replay of the country’s horrific 2007 presidential elections, which produced a wave of ethnic violence that killed more than a thousand people and displaced over a half a million.

In the latest in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Director J. Peter Pham and Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton argue that Mali’s plunge into failed state status has its roots in politics—specifically the persistent political and economic marginalization of the Tuareg and other northerners by successive central governments—and, thus, the French intervention risked exacerbating and prolonging the crisis.

In the latest in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Brutonargues that while decentralization is increasingly the norm across Africa, with “almost every country on the continent engaging in local elections and resource sharing, or at least paying lip service to such notions,” the United States and its European allies have been slow to engage with sub-state governance structures, even on security-related concerns where the growing threat from transnational and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist networks add urgency to the need to bolster local authorities.

In the latest in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton notes that the rate of attacks by Somali pirates has plunged and attributes the drop mostly to the adoption of self-protection measures, including the use of armed security teams, by the private sector.

The Michael S. Ansari Africa Center hosted a visit today by a delegation from the Office of the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, led by Professor V.E. Strasser-King, director of the Strategy and Policy Unit, and Caroline King, coordinator of policy benchmarking.

In the tenth in the series of “IntelBriefs” on African security issues being produced by the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center in partnership with the Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy, Ansari Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton weighs the evidence of and potential for operational cooperation between the various Islamist extremist groups in Yemen and Somalia, including al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Ansar al Sharia, and al Shabaab.